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Music
Stuff about music, either mine or stuff I am listening to.
The Sunday Song: The Coming (Gloria)
(Visited 9101 times)A really long time ago now I wrote a song that was sort of about the Rapture. Specifically, it was a song that wondered, what if the Rapture happened, and because the world generally sucked, almost nobody actually got taken up? I decided to write a song about the one town that was actually good enough to get saved. I wanted the lyric to have an urban legend feel — like, how did anyone ever hear this even happened if the whole town vanished? (That’s why it comes from “a friend of a friend.”) And what if it was aliens, instead — how do we know it was really the Rapture, and not something else? The song was an acoustic piece, lots of floaty suspended chords and fingerpicking, very mellow vibe.
Another really long time ago, but not as long — maybe eight or nine years — we had a spare bedroom where Todd McKimmey & I would do recording. And one of the tunes that Todd decided that we should record was this one. Naturally, Todd being Todd, he wanted to put drums and electric guitars on it. I think it was one of the first times I ever played to a drum machine, actually (which means I wasn’t very good at it!).
Well, I found that recording lurking on my hard drive this morning. Alas, Todd was unable to scare up a choir for the chorus, so there’s a point where there’s nothing but clapping and the voice. That’s him on bass and electric, plus the drum machine programming of course.
We went on to do some rather odd and interesting co-writes, usually with him supplying the heavy rock & me doing lyrics and melody. I have those lurking on my hard drive too.
The Sunday Song: Unicorn
(Visited 7875 times)“I used to have a unicorn.”
It was a strange thing to say in the morning,
But she said it anyway, talking into the pillow,
And her voice was sad, and it caught on the words,
Even as she caught my hand.
Ellis Paul concert
(Visited 23196 times)Last night we went to see Ellis Paul at the AcousticMusicSanDiego series. Antje Duvekot was the opening act, and she also joined Ellis on stage for much of the last set.
Ellis Paul is, bar none, one of the best songwriters in American music today. So naturally, the concert was excellent. You walked away feeling disappointed that so many great songs went unperformed — “Paris in a Day,” “Did Galileo Pray?” “Speed of Trees,” “Angel in Manhattan,” and so on… but so many great songs did get performed that you quickly realized there simply wasn’t enough time in one concert to do his catalog justice.